Man After Midnight
by Scriptor Sapiens
Summary: After springing everyone's favorite Dark Acolyte from the slammer,the girls treat themselves to a night out.


Ventress looked sick. Aayla, Ahsoka, and Padme had dragged her into a nightclub under threat of turning her in if she didn't come. Now, the assassin leaned against the bar and said, "NO! I WON'T!"

"Oh, c'mon, Baldy!" Ahsoka whined. "Dancing is fun."

"Fun for idiots," Ventress snarled. She sipped her drink and made a face. "Force, what is this?"

"That's a white Russian," Padme grinned, "And it's mine, by the way."

Asajj put the drink down carefully. "The next time you try to feed me poison, tell me first."

Aayla snickered, passing Ventress another drink. "Try this then."

Ventress sipped it and suddenly a broad grin came across her face. "Oh my God, it's delicious. What is it?"

"Dissarrono, single malt whiskey," Aayla smirked.

Ventress looked up at the menus to see how much the entire bottle would be, but to her dismay, it was quite expensive just for another glass.

She fell back again, sullenly. "My life just seems to be stacked against me, doesn't it?"

Suddenly Padme's eyes lit up and she grinned like an evil jackal. "You know, you could ask that young…thing over there to buy you another one." She gestured towards some gelatinous blob that was quivering nearby.

"That's a puddle of naggon snot," Ventress sneered. Then she turned to Ahsoka. "Definitely your type, youngling."

Ahsoka feigned a pained look. "Well!" she said. "This coming to the people who saved your butt from going to prison."

She looked to Aayla for defense, but found that she was laughing into her martini. Ahsoka lifted the olive into Aayla's throat and she began to choke.

Padme slapped Aayla's back, and the olive shot across the room and hit a poor unfortunate passer on the head.

Aayla gasped for breath as Padme said, "C'mon. You just gotta turn on the old charm."

"I'm afraid my charm's on switch is rusty from disuse."

"Well, we'll just hafta grease it up and turn it on!" Ahsoka said, grinning from ear to ear. She reached into her handbag and brought out what looked like a cosmetic shop in a bottle.

Ventress looked like she was about to be sick. "Don't even insinuate that I'll wear that."

Ahsoka held the lipstick tube like it was a lightsaber, shouting, "En garde, baldy!"

Ventress snarled in disbelief. How had she descended this far?

Aayla was chuckling until she looked towards the door. Then her eyes widened. Rex, Kit, Anakin, and Obi Wan strode in laughing it up.

"Get down," she hissed, shoving her comrades under the bar table. The lipstick flew off and hit the same guy.

Ahsoka's head popped up like a resistant Jack-in-the-box. "Why? What's going on?" she asked, completely bewildered.

Asajj's hand came up, grabbed her neck and pulled her down. "I don't care about anyone else seeing us," the assassin hissed, "But I do care about them seeing us. I'm not supposed to be out of prison! They'll kill us all!"

"Anakin will understand," Padme interjected, but then Rex sat very close to them and Ventress seized all of them by their belts and hauled them over the bar like feathers.

"Get down!" she hissed.

"Did you hear something?" Rex asked incredulously from above.

"Must be your imagination," Anakin said nonchalantly, and sat down on a very dusty pillow right next to his hidden Padawan.

Ahsoka's nose twitched. Her mouth opened. What was she doing? Oh, Force, she was going to sneeze!

Ventress leapt across the bar and stifled the sneezing Padawan. "If they hear you we're finished!"

But Ahsoka couldn't stop it. It was coming like a train, and Asajj knew it. Suddenly she reached out with both of her cold gray hands and clamped them firmly over Ahsoka's nose and mouth. The air, having nowhere to go, blew its way out her ears. Her eardrums ruptured, and there was a loud 'wheeee!' as the air whistled through the ruptured tissue.

"Now I'm sure I heard something," Rex said, beginning to look around.

"Calm down, Rex," Obi Wan chided. "We're not always in a battlefield."

Meanwhile, under the table, Ventress was chuckling with mirth and Ahsoka was holding her busted ears. Suddenly, an inquisitive Rex looked under the table. Ventress shoved Ahsoka down the length of the bar and she herself busted through the table, using the force to conceal the noise, so to anyone else it would like the wood just came apart. Except Rex caught a view of her leather boot as it vanished under the table.

He was caught off guard for a second. 'Ventress?' he thought. 'No, she was in prison, wasn't she?'

"Rex!" came Kit's voice and he slapped him on the rear and he did a face plant into the table. "We came here to have fun, not to gawk around at the underside of ladies' skirts!"

Anakin chuckled. "And I thought clones were highly disciplined."

"But sir, didn't you see…"

"REX!" howled Obi Wan, getting the attention of half the bar. Apparently he was a lightweight because the one gin he drank had sent him over. "DON'T MAKE ME MAKE A SCENE HERE!" he said, swaying on his seat.

Meanwhile, halfway across the bar, Aayla was snapping pictures with a mini-cam. Blackmail was definitely forthcoming.

Ventress was scouting out the territory for exits. The barman was standing in front of the wine cellar door so there wasn't any way through there, Rex, Obi Wan and the others were between her and the main gate. There was no way out! Unless…she caught sight of Ahsoka's makeup bag.

Knowing she would regret it for the rest of her life, she snagged it and began to apply the flesh tone.

Five minutes later, Ahsoka was crawling through the bar, hoping not to be seen with her Jedi hood. She was looking for Ventress, Aayla, and Padme, who had all made themselves scarce when the boys had come in.

"Psst!" came from a broom closet.

She looked in and saw Padme and Aayla looking through the keyhole. "Get in!" said Padme and snaked one of her arms out the crack in the door and yanked Ahsoka through.

On the other side it was very dark and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, much less your comrades in the mission of getting some kicks.

Aayla was snickering madly. "Oh, these blackmail pics are gorgeous," she gushed, flipping through them on the digital camera. "He'll pay through the nose to keep these hidden. I think I'll start my rates at twenty bucks a week."

"Where's Ventress?" Padme hissed, glaring the keyhole.

"I don't know!" Ahsoka whimpered. "I lost her after she shoved me down the bar!"

Padme scanned the bar crowd for Ventress. She would be hard to miss, tall, pale, evil looking. Ah…nope. Nu-uh. No one there. Nada.

And then she saw something that made her heart skip five beats. Ventress was sitting five seats away from Anakin, Obi Wan, and Rex, only she didn't look like Ventress any more. She had on an auburn wig that fell down to her waist in shiny locks. It looked very real. Flesh colored powder had turned her deadly gray skin into a vibrant tan that looked gorgeous. Her lips were blood red from the lipstick and her eyelashes looked like they could touch the opposite wall.

Only one thing puzzled her. Where did she get that dazzling blue cocktail dress and heels?

"Oh…my…God…" she whispered.

The other two crowded to the doorway and chorused… "HOLY CRAP!"

"She's hot!" Ahsoka whispered.

"What's she doing?" Aayla hissed. "Is she nuts?"

"She's trying to make a discreet escape," Padme explained. "If she looks like she's a regular bar customer, she'll walk out the door and she'll never be seen again."

"The problem is," Ahsoka snickered, "Is that she's about three inches taller than the other bar customers…"

"And much more ripped," Aayla put in.

Suddenly there was a FOOF! And the closet was illuminated with bright light as Aayla's camera flashed.

"What are you doing?" Padme hissed.  
"BLACKMAIL!" Aayla crowed. This was her lucky day. "Forty bucks a week! And that's being cheap!"

"Guys, she's moving," Ahsoka hissed. "She's leaving…she's going…going, going…Oh, no!"

"Why what's happened?"

A spotlight had just illuminated her form and she froze like an ice sculpture.

"WE HAVE OUR NEXT VOLUNTEER TO SING!" came a voice over the loudspeaker.

First all three were stunned. Then they roared with laughter seeing her incredibly horrible luck.

Ventress was contemplating bolting, but then she would have to leap across two tables, take down five bar-goers, and knock out all the groupies that were converging upon her. She could've done it, but not in Stiletto heels. So she put on a façade sheepish smile and said…

"I can't sing."

"THAT DOESN'T MATTER, SISTER!" came the voice. Whoever it was had obviously no clue the fury that was behind those ash eyes. If she found out who that was, she was going to kill them, slowly and painfully.

Unbeknownst to them, that person was Anakin who, in a drunken stupor, had hijacked the DJ's mind.

The flock of groupies ushered her onto the stage and the lyrics began to appear on the TV screen. Music began.

Ventress had faced down droids, Jedi, and man-eating monsters, and right now she was about to pee her pants. The song that was playing was "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" which, as it happened, was a radio transmission that Anakin had randomly picked up on his telecommunicator.

Everyone was looking up at her expectantly. There was no exit in sight. She would just have to wing it.

"Half past twelve…"

Surprisingly, she was very good.

The girls in the closet were floored and stared unbelievingly as now she began to dance. And dance very well.

The people on the floor went crazy. She began to perform like she was onstage and reached out to touch the hands of the people who were reaching up. They were even more floored when she pulled Anakin out of the audience and began to dance with him. They looked like they were having the most fun ever, much to Padme's dismay.

All the while, Rex was cheering. Obi Wan wasn't because he was out cold on the floor.

And Ventress, though putting on a very convincing show, had spotted a door backstage that was unguarded. As the song closed, she slugged Anakin in the face and bolted, high heels forgotten, left spinning on the floor.

The girls tore out of the closet while everyone was attending to an out cold Anakin and got into the gunship just as Ventress did. There was a furious brawl for a second over control of the wheel and Ventress was subdued by a well-placed karate chop courtesy of Ahsoka.

Padme jumped into the driver's seat, turned the key, hit the accelerator, and they were gone. She didn't even give the hyperdrive a minute to assess conditions; she floored it and by the time Anakin was awake, they were a good five light-years away back at Coruscant.

"That was close," Ventress said, massaging her throat and tossing the wig in a nearby burn barrel. She shed the dress to reveal her usual combats.

"Too close," Ahsoka grinned. "Oh, but that was fun!"

She was suddenly bouncing on tiptoes with a mood swing that would make most menopausal women blush.

"Now what?" Aayla asked. "Ventress can't stay here."

Suddenly Ahsoka was very pensive, and a thought came to her. "Y'know what? We could hide her in Yoda's old bedroom. He never uses that dump anymore. Who could blame him? That thing has a view of the sewage system."

"Perfect," Ventress muttered. "Sewers make the best escape routes."

Padme seemed to have heard. "How do we know you won't escape?"

Ventress was about to lie about it, but Aayla popped up like a demonic Jack-in-the-box. "Because, if she does, this goes straight onto Separatist hotline!" She slammed down the pictures of her dancing and doing karaoke. Ventress paled.

"I won't leave," she cried. "Trust me, just don't let those pictures out! Dooku will have my head if he sees them."

"That's not the only heads that will be rolling," Ahsoka muttered, looking towards the blast doors. "Look what the cat dragged in."

Kit stumbled in the doors, carrying an unconscious Obi Wan on his shoulders. "This is the absolutely last time…" And when he caught sight of the four girls standing in the middle of the ships bay, he dropped the Jedi on his head, waking him up very effectively.

"WHAT THE FRICK IS GOING ON?" he howled.

Obi Wan clutched his head. "Kit, please," he began, then caught sight of the girls himself. "WHAT THE FRICK IS GOING ON?"

Anakin and Rex raced in as well, lightsaber and blaster bared.

That's when Ventress leaned over, whispered, "Nemo is go!" to Aayla, hiked up her skirt and made tracks down the hallway behind them.

Obi Wan, instantly aware, on a knee jerk reaction leapt up and gave chase. The others were quick to follow, but suddenly Aayla whispered, "I can't breathe!" and collapsed into Rex's surprised arms in a dead faint.

FIN.


End file.
